Video 14:44
Former Slater and Gordon partner explores AWU scandal

Former Slater and Gordon partner Nick Styant-Browne joins us to provide context to the scandal surrounding Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her time at the law firm.

Transcript

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Pressing new questions are being asked tonight by a highly-placed insider about the union slush fund the Prime Minister Julia Gillard helped establish in the 1990s.

A former colleague and partner in the Prime Minister's old law firm has come forward with new claims and evidence about the long-running saga.

In his first television interview, Nick Styant-Browne reveals his own concerns and the tensions within the law firm over Ms Gillard's role and provides 7.30 with documents that he claims shed fresh light on the affair.

Caro Meldrum-Hanna has our report.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA, REPORTER: Back in the 1990s, Nick Styant-Browne was an equity partner with the Labor law firm Slater & Gordon in Melbourne. He made his name fighting high-profile cases like the campaign for compensation for Papua New Guinea villagers for the environmental devastation caused by BHP's Ok Tedi mine.

NICK STYANT-BROWNE, EQUITY PARTNER, SLATER & GORDON (1995): This decision upholds the political right of the Attorney-General to decide whether or not criminal contempt proceedings should be brought.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: But around the same time, Mr Styant-Browne became embroiled in tensions within the law firm, which then acted for the Australian Workers' Union. At the centre of it were these two men: union official Ralph Blewitt and branch secretary Bruce Wilson. They were accused of being behind a fraud in which hundreds of thousands of dollars from developers were paid into a slush fund and then siphoned off. Julia Gillard was a lawyer with Slater & Gordon at the time and Mr Wilson's girlfriend. She helped set up the fund, but has categorically denied any wrongdoing.

JULIA GILLARD, PRIME MINISTER (August 23): These are defamatory allegations and they are wrong.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: The saga was revived yesterday by the self-confessed fraudster Ralph Blewitt. He returned to Australia after eight years abroad announcing he plans to tell all to the Victoria police fraud squad tomorrow.

RALPH BLEWITT, FORMER AWU OFFICIAL: I would say to anybody that has any knowledge of this: please come forward and clear the decks.

CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Prompted by the renewed coverage of the issue, today Nick Styant-Browne, now a lawyer in Seattle, decided to give his first television interview to reveal what he knows about the slush fund saga. He's provided 7.30 with documents that he says shed new light on Julia Gillard's involvement in a key transaction associated with the fund: the purchase of this house in Kerr Street, Fitzroy. One document is a previously unseen excerpt from an interview between Ms Gillard and her superiors at Slater & Gordon in which she told them she had first learned about the mortgage on the property in 1995. Another document is a Commonwealth Bank fax addressed to Ms Gillard which refers to the mortgage details in 1993. Nick Styant-Browne says the documents raise important new questions.

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Nick Styant-Browne is now a lawyer based in the United States and he joined me earlier.

Nick Styant-Browne, why did you decide that you wanted to speak out about what you knew regarding Julia Gillard, Slater & Gordon and the AWU slush fund?

NICK STYANT-BROWNE, LAWYER: In August of this year it became clear to me that after all these years this story was finally going to come out and Slater & Gordon made a public statement that Ms Gillard had been cleared of any wrongdoing, had taken a very long sabbatical, had resigned from the firm and a meeting room had been named after her. And that was on any view a stunningly incomplete account of the circumstances of her departure. And it was following that that I resolved it was in the public interest to release both non-privileged parts of the transcript of the interview of September 1995 together with Pete Gordon's statement concerning the circumstances of her departure.

LEIGH SALES: When did you first become aware of the existence of the slush fund?

NICK STYANT-BROWNE: It was around August of 1995 when it was first brought to my attention.

LEIGH SALES: And how was that brought to your attention?

NICK STYANT-BROWNE: I can't remember precisely. One or other of the partners came to me and told me what they knew at that time about the involvement of Ms Gillard in the incorporation of the Workplace Reform Association.

LEIGH SALES: What action did Slater & Gordon take to investigate the circumstances?

NICK STYANT-BROWNE: Well, again, I was not the principal or one of the principal partners involved, but in so far as I was involved there was an interview of Ms Gillard conducted on 11th September of 1995 where various matters were put to her concerning both her involvement in the incorporation of the association and her involvement in the acquisition of the Kerr Street property by Ralph Blewitt. And it was following upon that interview that Ms Gillard took her long sabbatical and resigned several months later in May of 1996.

LEIGH SALES: Broadly, what did Ms Gillard say about her role in that interview?

NICK STYANT-BROWNE: Well, it covered a number of areas, Leigh, so it's difficult to give you one statement that summarises what she said. So far as the association was concerned, Ms Gillard claimed that she thought it was a slush fund for the re-election of a union ticket headed by Bruce Wilson that she had no involvement in the setting up of any bank accounts associated with the association and she had no involvement with the association otherwise following upon the work she did in relation to its incorporation. In respect of the property transaction involving Kerr Street, she stated that she understood Mr Blewitt was buying the property as an investment, that Mr Wilson would be a tenant and she believed that Mr Blewitt had the financial resources to fund the purchase together with a loan.

LEIGH SALES: What were your concerns about the fund and about Julia Gillard's involvement in its establishment?

NICK STYANT-BROWNE: Ms Gillard stated in the interview that she did not open a file. This was not passing advice to a rank-and-file union member; this matter involved the incorporation of a legal entity and it was most unusual that a file was not opened. Fees were waived in relation to the work that was done on the file. Then there was the question of her involvement in the purchase of the Kerr Street property and the fact that she had understood that a tenant of the property was to be her then boyfriend Mr Wilson and that was a relationship which had never been disclosed to me. I did not find out about it until August of 1995. And so they were two of the principal matters that concerned me about her conduct.

LEIGH SALES: Did all of the partners in the firm share that view? Did Slater & Gordon have an official view about it?

NICK STYANT-BROWNE: There was a spectrum of views across the partnership and Peter Gordon has said that he was willing to give Julia Gillard the benefit of the doubt, so that was one end of the spectrum. I was towards the other end of the spectrum in that I was not readily prepared to give Ms Gillard the benefit of the doubt and I made that clear. There was never any real resolution of that debate in the partnership because as events transpired, Ms Gillard agreed to resign, and so it was never necessary for the partnership to resolve itself what actions should be taken.

LEIGH SALES: In the draft statement that you and Peter Gordon worked on together regarding the matter, Peter Gordon said that trust and confidence had evaporated. Is that accurate?

NICK STYANT-BROWNE: Yes. As you can imagine from the circumstances that I've just explained regarding her work in the incorporation of the association and the acquisition of the Kerr Street property, those things taken together removed the trust as between the partners and Ms Gillard.

LEIGH SALES: Was Ms Gillard asked to resign?

NICK STYANT-BROWNE: You know, I don't want to sound evasive; I don't have a precise recollection of each and every discussion between the firm and Ms Gillard and I was not privy to all of the discussions. The best way I can put it is this: there was deep disquiet amongst the partnership about Ms Gillard's conduct and it was never necessary for the partnership to resolve that issue because Ms Gillard herself elected to resign.

LEIGH SALES: Today you're releasing an extra section of the transcript of the Gillard interview at Slater & Gordon. What does it show?

NICK STYANT-BROWNE: What it shows is that Ms Gillard claimed at the interview in 1995 that the first she heard about the Slater & Gordon loan for the acquisition of the Kerr Street property was around August of that year. So, her claim is that the first she heard about the fact that the loan for the Kerr Street property was a Slater & Gordon mortgage was not until August of 1995, the transaction of course having taken place in March of 1993.

LEIGH SALES: OK. You've also released other documents. One is a fax from the Commonwealth Bank to Julia Gillard. What, in your opinion, does that show?

NICK STYANT-BROWNE: Yeah, I haven't released those documents, Leigh. Those documents form part of a conveyancing file which are now matters of public record. So they are from the conveyancing file which Mr Blewitt consented be released and made publicly available. Now what those documents show is that there is no doubt Ms Gillard knew of the mortgage from Slater & Gordon in March of 1993. And just to give you some examples, she personally arranged for the mortgage insurance for the Kerr Street property through the Commonwealth Bank and a letter was faxed to her on March 22 of 1993 from the Commonwealth Bank marked for her attention noting that the insurance had been renewed and further advising that the Slater & Gordon mortgage interest was noted on the policy of insurance.

LEIGH SALES: What do you believe is the significance of the facts compared to the statements that Julia Gillard made in the interview?

NICK STYANT-BROWNE: Well, it's a matter for others to make judgments about the credibility of Ms Gillard's statements. What I can say is this: that there is absolutely no doubt that Ms Gillard not only knew of the Slater & Gordon mortgage in March of 1993, but was specifically involved in taking steps to facilitate that mortgage. Now, that's a matter of documents; it's not a matter of assertion or hearsay. Now, you then have a situation where two and a half years later in September of 1995 Ms Gillard is asserting that the first she heard it was a Slater & Gordon mortgage was in August of 1995. Now, it's up to others to make the judgment about her credibility.

LEIGH SALES: Do you accept that there's no evidence of any wrongdoing on Julia Gillard's part?

NICK STYANT-BROWNE: You know, I have tried to avoid making those sorts of judgments. My role is a limited one and I've been assiduous in so limiting it to simply give what access I am able to to an accurate account of the circumstances of Ms Gillard's departure in 1995 from Slater & Gordon. And I leave it up to others to make judgments about wrongdoing and relevance and so on.

LEIGH SALES: In August, Julia Gillard held a press conference and answered every question put to her. Do you believe that she's answered all relevant questions?

NICK STYANT-BROWNE: Well, again, I'm not really sure that that's a judgment for me to make. I think that's best made by the public and by political commentators.

LEIGH SALES: Do you have any sort of personal grievance against Julia Gillard?

NICK STYANT-BROWNE: No, not remotely. I have never spoken to her to my recollection since she left the firm and officially resigned from the firm in 1996 and prior to that I never had the remotest personal issue with her.

LEIGH SALES: Nick Styant-Browne, thank you very much for talking to us.

NICK STYANT-BROWNE: Thank you.

LEIGH SALES: This afternoon, 7.30 invited the Prime Minister to join the program tonight, but she had prior commitments. Her office sent a response to questions in writing. Prime Minister Gillard's spokesperson says, "The file shows that Ralph Blewitt was personally dealing with the Commonwealth Bank. Ms Gillard has no recollection of seeing the correspondence from the bank."

Ms Gillard stands by her statements in the Slater & Gordon interview as her best recollection of events.

Her spokesman says there's no contradiction in anything that we put to her office.

She didn't personally arrange for the mortgage insurance for the Kerr Street property and Julia Gillard's relationship with Bruce Wilson was not unknown within the firm.